Fujitsu will release enterprise hard drives for upgrades

Fujitsu Computer Products of America will sell its enterprise-level hard drives to users seeking to upgrade servers and workstations.

The drives come at both 10,000-revolution-per-minute and 7,200-rpm spindle speeds, said Joel Hagberg, senior director of storage products for the San Jose, Calif., company.

The 10,000-rpm Enterprise 36LP drives hold 9.1G, 18.2G or 36.4G in a one-inch form factor, Hagberg said. The maximum internal data transfer rate is 62.5 megabytes/sec with average seek time of 4.7 milliseconds. Enterprise 36LP drives support both Fibre Channel and Ultra3 SCSI interfaces.

The Enterprise 18LP Series includes two 7,200-rpm drives, the single-platter 9.1G and the dual-platter 18.2G model for entry-level servers and workstations, Hagberg said. Top data transfer rate is 49.2 mega-bytes/sec via an Ultra3 SCSI interface.

A new feature that comes with the enterprise-class drives is an acceleration feedback system, in which small accelerometers at the corners of the drive measure and balance vibration.

Acceleration feedback improves performance of large arrays or multiple-disk servers, Hagberg said. 'You get kind of a resonance from all the heads seeking at the same time,' he said.

Transfer time

The 5,400-rpm XV10 entry-level drives for desktop PCs have maximum transfer rates of 37.8 megabytes/sec and 9.5-ms seek time, said Stephanie Mantello, product manager for desktop products. Capacities range from 10.2G to 20.4G.

The XV10 desktop PC drives are available now, and the enterprise drives will come out soon.

Estimated prices for the 10,000-rpm Enterprise 36LP drives range from about $400 for 9.1G to about $1,500 for 36.4G.

For the Enterprise 18LP 7,200 drives, price estimates range from $250 to $450; for the XV10 desktop PC drives, they range from less than $110 to less than $180.